After nearly a year of development, the Slackware developers have released the second point update for version 13 of their Linux distribution. Discussing the release, the developers say that users will "appreciate the performance and stability that can only come with careful and rigorous testing".

As previously noted, the latest stable release should have been version 13.2, but the developers chose to raise the version number to 13.37 ("leet") – partly so that it could have a codename like other Linux distributions often do, whereas Slackware has never had one.

Slackware Linux 13.37 is based on the 2.6.37.6 Linux kernel, but also ships with the 2.6.38.4 Linux kernel as an alternative for users that want to run the latest version, It features KDE SC 4.5.5 (KDE 4.6.2 is the latest branch) and version 4.6.2 of the lightweight Xfce desktop – Xfce 4.8.0 was released in January.

The X Window System has been upgraded and includes the open source Nouveau driver for NVIDIA graphics cards. The Slackware installer has been improved and now supports installing to btrfs. Package updates include Pidgin 2.7.11, GIMP 2.6.11, Perl 5.12.3 and Python 2.6.6, as well as version 4.5.5 of the Konqueror web browser, SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 3, Firefox 4.0 and Thunderbird 3.1.9.

Priding itself in maintaining stability and security, Slackware is one of the earliest distributions to be built on top of the Linux kernel and is the oldest still being maintained. Following the latest stable update, there is no specific roadmap for publication of the next stable release. Like Debian developers, the Slackware project does not stick to rigid time-lines, but instead waits until developers are satisfied with the current state of development.

Further inforation about this stable update can be found in the official release announcement, release notes and in the packages list. Slackware Linux 13.37 is available to download for 32- and 64-bit systems from the project's site. At the time of this posting, the Slackware site appears to be having intermittent problems.